The good old days!
Steve H: Yep. Miss those old chimneys we had to climb, and nicking apples off the barrows, using plastic bags to keep the rain off when we were asleep, drinking A cup of cold tea. without milk or sugar - or tea - in a cracked cup, an’ all. Mind you, we never used to 'ave a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper. The best we could manage most days was to suck on a piece of damp cloth. But you know, we were happy in those days, because we were poor. My old dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son." He was right.
Hugo: I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny, old, tumbled-down house with great big holes in the roof.
Dave R: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
Ian: Eh, you were lucky to have a room. We used to have to live in the corridor...
Hugo: We used to dream of livin’ in a corridor. Would've been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us!
Ian: Well, when I say 'house' it was just a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!
Hugo: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go live in a lake!
Steve H: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred-and-fifty of us livin’ in a shoebox in the middle of the road!
Ian: Cardboard box?
Steve H: Aye.
Hugo: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a newspaper in a septic tank. We used to have to get up every morning at six o'clock, clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill: fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence (6 pennies) a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
Ian: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
Dave R: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick road clean with tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing-cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at that mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home... our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
Hugo: Right... I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down the mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home... our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
Dave R: And you try to tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you.